Posted on 11 August 2014, 15:42

Having read numerous books about mediums over the past 25 years,  and having written about many of the best mediums, I thought I knew all their names.  However, clearly I missed one.  In recently reading a book entitled The Certainty of Eternity, authored by L.C. Danby, I discovered an Australian medium named Stan Walsh, who, if the author has accurately reported the story – and I have no reason to believe he did not – must be considered one of the greatest of mediums.

Walsh is said to have discovered his mediumistic ability in 1919, at age 20, when he reluctantly accompanied a friend to several séances with a Port Melbourne medium.  Impressed by the information that came through at his first sitting, Walsh returned the next week and was told by the medium that he also had mediumistic ability.  She told him to hold a pad and pencil on this lap.  “The séance was almost half over when suddenly his right hand began to write on the paper; writing furiously as if controlled by some invisible hand,” Danby explained.  “Later when the lights were turned up he found himself possessor of a sheaf of written messages for every member of the circle.”

Left to Right. Bert Jones, Stan Walsh,
woman unknown, Leslie Danby

At the third meeting, Walsh experienced a complete blackout.  When he regained consciousness, he was told by those present that he was controlled by a Red Indian named Malocca and that he began speaking in Malocca’s native tongue, until Mrs. Beames asked Malocca to attempt to speak in English, after which he spoke in broken English. He said he had been sent by God to be the chief guide and doorkeeper to Walsh. Then Malocca allowed other spirit entities to speak through Walsh and many evidential messages were given to others in the room.

Bert Jones, one of Walsh’s best friends, was a “doubting Thomas” until his father communicated.  As further evidence that it was his father, Jones asked him to speak in Welsh, as he used to do.  The father obliged.  Jones then asked him to sing his favorite song in Welsh.  The father complied and further revealed a number of intimate family secrets, fully satisfying the son that he was hearing from his father.

A number of seemingly advanced spiritual personalities began communicating through Walsh, the first being Angus Du Font, a former Frenchman who said that he had died 47 years earlier.  He attempted to give those present a brief description of the world of spirit, saying it was comprised of many spheres of light and nothing of a material nature existed there.  He added that the beauty and scenery were indescribable and that there was nothing on earth to compare with it.

At a later sitting, Du Font lectured the Inner Circle that had developed around Walsh on low-level spirits, informing them that they should not call them “evil spirits,” but rather “unprogressed spirits.”  He pointed out that many of them are drawn towards séances as they long for the company of human beings and need help. He added that they dwell in darkness created by themselves.  When asked why angels or more progressed spirits do not help them out of the darkness, he explained that it takes time – as it is measured there – for them to understand higher beings.  Initially, they understand only human beings in the flesh.

Danby met Walsh in 1927, a year or so after his wife Winnie died during childbirth, when friends persuaded him to attend a séance with Walsh.  He recalled that it began with a hymn, followed by a prayer, and then a lecture by a spirit guide called Vashti.  Several other spirit visitors spoke to other people in attendance, either through the direct voice trumpet or through the medium directly.  “This went on for about an hour, and then a woman’s voice was heard coming from the lips of the medium under deep-trance,” Danby wrote. “She called me by name, and when I answered she said it was ‘Win’!  She spoke to me, and I to her.  It was an eager, emotionally-charged conversation in which she talked to me of many intimate incidents in our past life, of her care and guidance for Ron, her son by her first marriage, and many other personal matters known only to ourselves.  I was convinced beyond all doubt.  I left this house of strangers with my head in a whirl.  Life, it seemed, did have some meaning.  The dull, grey cloud of loneliness and desolation that had enveloped me for more than a year, since Win died, seemed to have lifted…”

Danby befriended Walsh and became a regular member of the circle. Over the years, he observed various forms of mediumship with Walsh, including direct voice, trance voice, automatic writing, clairvoyance, clairaudience, transfiguration, apports, and “materialized painting.” He heard spirits speak to their friends and relatives in various languages, including French, Italian, Greek, German, Hindustani, and Yiddish.  “One of the strange aspects of deep trance is that when a spirit comes back for the first time, he or she reverts to the physical condition which they were in immediately prior to death,” Danby noted. “If they died in agony, they came back in agony; if they died short of breath they came back with the same condition; if a person left the body suffering from a throat disease, he or she would come back choking and gasping for breath.  All the symptoms of pain and distress were given to the medium.”  The guides explained that this is natural for a spirit when it contacts flesh and blood again, to recall exactly how he or she felt just before death. 

Both advanced and low-level spirits visited the circle.  “Weak or unprogressed spirits who were lost or in great darkness, were continually brought to our meetings by the guides to be encouraged and helped on the road to progression and peace,” Danby further wrote.  “Whenever an unhappy spirit, or lost soul, controlled the instrument, his or her name was ascertained and each member of the circle would promise to pray for them also in the silence of their own homes.”

During one especially intriguing sitting, in 1930, a “visitor” from Belgium began speaking through the entranced Walsh in his own language.  When asked if he could speak English, there was a pause, after which the speech then came in broken English, saying, “I come from Dietrich in Belgium.  I am – what you say – a deep trance medium. I come from a circle of eight people.  Your medium – he is now in MY body bringing greetings to them, my countrymen.  And I bring greetings from my people in Dietrich.” As Danby explained it, the two deep-trance mediums had exchanged bodies.  When Walsh returned to consciousness, he said he remembered sitting in a small dimly lit room and when he began to speak, those present did not understand him.  He was shown by a spirit guide, hovering just above and in front of him, how to translate the message, so that the Belgian sitters could understand him. 

Although Walsh apparently had no artistic ability of any kind in his conscious state, he displayed considerable talent in the deep trance state, said to be controlled by a spirit called Professor Jenkinson, whose hobby when alive was painting.  “I witnessed, together with many others, the transfer of colours on to paper,” Danby wrote. “Professor Jenkinson, or sometimes the spirit of the medium’s brother, Cecil Walsh, when controlling the medium, would take an ordinary pencil or a pen and using the medium’s hands, sketch the outline of the face or figure he was working upon.  After the pen or pencil outline was completed, he would cause the medium to start to massage the fingers of each hand, with a rapid washing motion, one hand over the other.  This was done in order to release, or set in motion, the flow of magnetism through the fingers which was needed to materialize the colours.  Then he would hold the two hands of the medium over the sketch and shake the fingers deftly and swiftly over every portion of the outline.  As he did this, one could see the colours forming on the portrait.  Finally, it would be finished, in vivid colours – life-like and clear.”

On one occasion, a member of the circle, Mrs. McIntosh, brought a black and white photograph of herself encased in a frame under glass.  “As the colour stained fingers shook just above the framed photograph, we saw, appearing through the glass, the pink coming on to the cheeks, the red on the lips, golden yellow tint her hair, and blue slowly appear in the eyes,” Danby reported. “When he had finished, there before our astonished eyes, was this perfectly coloured photograph of Mrs. McIntosh, painted through the glass.”

Danby relates many more mind boggling observations in his very intriguing book, originally published in Australia in 1974 and recently republished by White Crow Books.  For more about the book see http://certaintyofeternity.com/wp/

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Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die is published by White Crow Books. His latest book, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife is now available on Amazon and other online book stores.
His latest book Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I is published by White Crow Books.

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Next blog post:  August 25  

Sir,

A marvelous write up on this gentleman medium I have admired for a few years now for his artistic potentials in mediumship. I am a passionate researcher and presenter on the topic of Precipitation Mediumship (spirit images, writings and signatures that precipitate out of the ethers onto canva we provide - all happens without human hands or spirit’s directly forming painting/drawing tools and creating said images and writings). My students have now begun to develop (thx to virtual zoom circles I hold weekly) precipitation potentials. Their results are marvelous to witness. Simple yet profound as the simplest of “student dots/lines” are no less than a miracle in a fully precipitated painting by Spirit Mind. I’m so proud of their growth!

I have collected many precipitated images and writings as artifacts over the years. Many gifts from those I interviewed on the subject, many from Spirit to me in seances. One Bangs Sister’s painting made its way to me via an estate sale of a famous American physical and trance medium of note. I had even had direct communication with the two sisters in seances through several direct voice, trance and materialization mediums. Lovely to see things come full circle in support of a person’s love and service to the greater Spirit World…

I will be sharing your write up tomorrow in an internationally based class in Trance from Holland. They will surely love reading this article and learning more of this fantastic medium of note.

Keep shining the light of spiritualism for others to come…

Blessings from Fort Lauderdale, USA! http://www.RevKevinLee.com

Cemal,

I am sorry I can’t help you on that.  The book does not contain anything about the Galipoli battles and I am not aware of any spirit communication related to it. If you do hear of any, please let me know.

Dear Brother MICHAEL TYMN,
Today I have read your interview on”Dead Men Talking” book about WW1, martyrs communicating afterlife, which you compiled from 5 cases, one of which was in Ypres of Belgium.
I’m going to order your book very soon and write my comments to your goodself later on.
However, I have a question now:
Does your book contain any case about the Galipoli Battles in 1915 between the ANZACS (Australian & New Zealend Army Corps) and the Ottomans located on the Strait “Dardanelles” ? (*)
If not, do you know any book/movie having AFTERLIFE or NEAR-DEATH experiences of dead soldiers or civilians in the last century, taking place in the said region (Galipoli) that you can advise me to study ?
Your comments shall be highly appreciated, as soon as possible.
(*) The 100th anniversary of the ANZAC vs TURKISH battles which took about 8 months in 1915/6, costing hundred thousands of dead soldiers to both sides, shall be comemerated in large scale and high level in Galipoli region (Canakkale, Turkey) in 25 April 2015 with not only the veterans and children or grand children of ANZACS and TURKS, but also the diplomatic celebrities of all countries involved, ie UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, Canada, Greece, etc. 
Kindly submitted to your information…
With best regards.
Cemal RODOPLU
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Beykoz, Istanbul, Turkey.
GSM.: +90.532.616 4644 .

Thanks for your reply, Michael! I should have said that I was specifically thinking of any African-American mediums from the early 20th century ... but I guess your answer would have been the same.

Hi Anthony,

I am not really a “researcher,” per se, just a journalist.  I can think of only one African-American medium, but his name escapes me at the moment.  He is a physical medium and somewhat controversial. His name will probably come to me right after I send this. Remember, however, that there are only a few modern mediums that we do hear about and they are primarily clairvoyants. 

I suspect that Africa has produced its share of mediums, maybe more than its share.  We just don’t hear about them. The best known author of mediumship in Africa is Dr. Bernard J. F. Laubscher (1897 – 1984) a South African psychiatrist, anthropologist, and psychical researcher.  The results of his psychical research and studies are set forth in Sex, Custom, and Psychopathology: a Study of South African Natives (1937), The Philosophy of the Evolution of Spirit (1947), Where Mystery Dwells (1963), Beyond Life’s Curtain (1967), In Quest of the Unseen (1969), The Pagan Soul (1975), Man’s Private God (1979) and Out of the Unseen (1980).  Some of these books are available at bookfinder.com

Hi Michael - in your 25 years of research, I’m wondering if you’ve ever come across any stories about African-American mediums.  If not, why do you think that would be? Thanks for a wonderful blog!

Les,

I was somewhat surprised by that as well.  Not that I doubt precognition, but I had not heard of it to that extent.  The famous newspaper tests involving Gladys Osborne Leonard are the best known tests I am aware of.  I know of others, but not to the extent of picking the winner in every race.  I wonder if that might have been exaggerated or distorted in the telling of it.

I am in CA USA now but when I was living in London long long ago I was very lucky to be able to do research for good mediumship ability of all the available physical mediums I could find.  As I no longer needed prove of LIFE AFTER DEATH having had wonderful physical proof years prior in my own home, I was not so impressed personally with physical mediums as I was with mental full trance mediums that gave philosophy of spirit life.  But I did go to full trance medium—Leslie Flint often for good evidence.  I am the daughter if a Holocaust survivor—my mother who escaped Germany in 1939.  Through Flint’s circle in the pitch dark and coming through the spirit formed voice box away from Leslie by a few yards, I would always have several of the 48 family members of my mother that perished come through with their own voices to say they have survived and how they are related to my mother and prove things about my mother’s life.  This was so healing for my mother who must have had PTSD because of ill treatment by the Nazis that it helped her feel more alive and she would then go to mediums herself to feel even more content about survival of the spirit.

Although Physical mediumship lacks the higher teachings and often gives the best only that the spirit in the spirit world knows—it’s enough to prove Life After Death. After that you are on your own to find the higher if one is so inclined.

Today this type of physical mediumship is not really here in its usual form being no longer useful, although a lot of spiritualists would like and still train for it.  Instead it seems a lot of physical is happening with the use of computers today. Also many people accept their own intuitiveness more today—. 

I would like to hear from anyone with experiences of Physical mediumship with the guiding help of computers. I feel it must be very easy for the spirit world to do this as long as we are aware they can do it.

Michael,
It is recounted in this book that the principal characters spent an afternoon at a horse race track and bet successfully on the winner of every race.
There are reports of precognition from time to time but this is the first that I have seen that offers objective evidence, assuming that the report is accurate/honest.
This in turn suggests that some communicating entities have a knowledge of events in advance of ours by at least a couple of hours.  You view of this would be most interesting.
Les Harris